The Worst of Me
by SunbeamsAndSomeBeans
Summary: Six moments when Yuuri has to deal with his own worst enemy. X-posted from AO3.


**I.**

The first time it happens, he's in gym class, although sitting this one out because it's his first day back after a week off with a stomach bug that pretty much everybody has had over the last month or so.

Classes are quieter than usual, due to so many people being off, but he's painfully aware that he's fallen behind; even though his sister had stopped by and picked his homework up, he hadn't been able to focus on any of it, even once the vomiting phase was over, even once his stomach was empty and he still kept retching until he thought he might tear himself apart. His mother had made him tea, and gently told him to just get some rest, that he'd catch up, but he already feels that his school work is slipping away from him faster than he would like, especially with sessions with Minako, and skating practice, and _oh God_.

His stomach clenches, but not like it has been; it just feels hard as stone and twice as heavy, causing him to hunch over on the bench. The crackers he managed to force down for lunch don't budge, a thick paste in the bottom of his gut, and he's suddenly aware that his armpits feel cold and damp in the unheated gym. The rumbling and squeaking of rubber soles on the floor shake him to the core.

It's fine, he tells himself, you're just still recovering from that bug. That's why you're freezing and sweating and-

It dawns on him that he's not breathing, and he forces himself to take a deep, shuddering gasp and pushing damp hair off his forehead with a trembling hand.

 _Why am I shaking?_

With a monumental effort, he forces himself to his feet, feeling oddly like he might catapult himself into the ceiling as his legs straighten. Coach is busy instructing everyone in cool down stretches, and he toys with the idea of just quietly asking him if he can leave, but something about the idea of asking in front of everyone if he can leave, of them all wondering why, when he's had a week off, is he just trying to be lazy, it's not like he's even doing anything anyway...

He manages to slip out of the gym unnoticed. It's raining outside, and standing under a tree isn't helping, since the branches are bare anyway. Finding that walking fast is at least forcing him to breathe, even if faster than usual, he hurries home, sprints up to his room, leans against his door, and sobs like a child for what feels like hours, but can't be, not when it's still light outside when his door handle turns.

"Yuuri? You in there?"

The worst of it seems to be over for now, although he still feels simultaneously exhausted and like every nerve ending is on fire, like the slightest noise or movement will feel like being hit by a train.

Knocking. "Yuuri, I know you're sitting against your door."

He hauls himself to his feet and opens his door. Mari, hair partially wrapped in foil, hands him a mug of tea. Vicchan scampers in, and gives him the most reproachful look he's ever seen from a dog.

"You alright? I saw you come in earlier, you didn't seem like you wanted to talk though."

He nods.

"Sure?"

"I'm f-" he chokes on the dryness of his own voice, clears his throat. "I'm fine. Just still feeling kind of sick."

"Is that why your homeroom teacher called?"

"What?"

"Don't worry, I pretended to be Mom. He called about half an hour ago, apparently you ditched gym and didn't tell anyone where you were going."

"Coach was busy."

"Hey, I don't care. He was mostly yelling stuff about what if there was a fire, how would they know you didn't burn alive, that kind of thing."

"I didn't think of that."

"Well, doesn't matter. I said I'd talk with my truant asshole son, and now I have. Luckily, Mom was busy and Dad's out."

"Thanks."

Mari checks her watch. "Anyway, dinner's in about half an hour, I've got to go rinse this out." She gestures at her foil-wrapped hair.

"OK. Probably a good idea, you smell of smoke, a little."

"That's the idea. Wash it off before they can notice. Not sure if I should have a lit cigarette near my hair when it's covered in bleach, but I haven't gone up in flames yet, so..."

"Well, be careful."

"Never. Hey, you sure you're OK? You look like you've seen a ghost. Or worse, Mr. Ukiyo in the onsen."

"Heh. I'm OK, just thought I was over it. I just still feel kind of shaky and weird, don't know why..."

"Low blood sugar? You haven't been eating much."

"Mm. Probably. You'd better go and rinse that stuff out."

Later, he stays up until three in the morning and still only clears about a third of the work he missed. When he does go to bed, fingers digging into Vicchan's fur in a way that can't be comfortable, all he can do is stare at the light steadily creeping through his window and listen to the irregular thudding of his pulse, beating out every second to slip away from him.

 **II.**

The main way of getting through tonight, he tells himself, is to pretend that the guest of honour is someone else.

The banners aren't for him, they're for some other Yuuri, one who will absolutely not fail, who will dive into his new life in a new country with new opportunities and a new coach and possibly never surface because he'll be just too busy, what with all the success he'll be drowning in. That Yuuri will be fine. This Yuuri might move away, but certainly doesn't deserve this level of celebration, not when there's every likelihood that he'll fuck something up so stupendously that he has to move back within a matter of months or even weeks. There could be a mix-up with college, maybe they meant to send the acceptance letter to another Yuuri, or another Katsuki, or another Katsuki Yuuri. Maybe there's someone else in Japan with the family name Yuuri and the first name Katsuki and that's why. It's the other way around in America, he reasons. He wonders what this mirror version of him is like.

He's spoken to his new coach a few times on the phone, but mostly via email. They both speak good enough English to communicate, and Celestino sounds nice, but they haven't met in person yet. What if he takes one look at him and just _knows_ , like he can smell weakness? He must be able to eyeball a decent athlete at a thousand paces, you don't get to be a sought-after coach without being able to sort the talented skaters from the time wasters. Will he even be able to fit his skating in around his degree, or his degree around his skating, or both be a complete disaster?

He looks around, at the room filled with pretty lights and a huge banner and his proud parents and people chatting, and he suddenly feels already so far away from all of it.

"Yuuri!" Minako claps a hand on his shoulder, grinning widely. "Why are you staring into space, hmm? Come on, you should be celebrating! Come and dance!"

Literally no-one is dancing. People are talking, and drinking, and eating, but no-one is dancing.

"I'm fine, just thinking."

"About what?"

"Nothing. Just..." he doesn't know what to say, but, like everything else, the people in the same room as him already seem to be slipping away from him, oh God, it's going to be five years, and if he thinks too hard he's sure he'll start crying again, like he hasn't been doing precisely that in his bedroom (now curiously bare, save for the posters on his wall; the last thing he needs at college is to have his walls plastered with posters of one specific guy) on and off all day.

"I'm going to miss everyone, that's all." He tried to choke down the lump in his throat. "Thanks for everything, Minako. You've been great."

"Oh Yuuri." She throws an arm around his shoulders. "You sound like you're dying, not going on an adventure. And you're more than welcome. Hey, if anyone asks you who taught you to dance..."

"I'll say Minako-sensei, best in Japan."

"Damn right. Play up the honourable sensei thing, Americans love that shit. Come on, have a drink, it's a celebration."

Later, as he sits outside, watching his father and some regulars smoking cigars, and Mari lighting a cigarette (to their parents' endless disapproval), he scratches Vicchan behind the ears and looks up at the stars. Not many are visible; it had been cloudy and muggy for a while.

He tries not to think about how he'll probably miss Vicchan most of all.

 **III.**

Celestino means well, he knows that. He's put up with his nonsense for the last how many years now?

He had been right about one thing. He'd wondered if his coach would be able to tell just by looking at him how close he was at any given moment to crumbling to dust. It turned out that he'd figured it out fairly quickly, although not as soon as Yuuri had assumed he would.

It had been after, what, their eighth session together? It had been an awful day. The train was delayed, he was an hour late for a ninety minute class, and he had to walk in in front of a whole lecture hall full of people, and of course they all looked up curiously. The lecturer had rather condescendingly informed him that he might as well have not bothered, and if "the language barrier" was an issue, perhaps he should get another student to help him. He tried to explain, but something about defending himself in front of all of these people and wasting yet more time locked his jaw shut, and he sat down and stared at his feet for the next half an hour.

He knew it was just one incident, but he failed to catch his train of thought in time, and before he knew it, he was tying his skates with a running inner mantra of "the lecturer hates me, the whole class thinks I'm too inept to catch a train, I'm going to fail that class, I'll have to take it again next semester, I won't be able to skate as often, I'll fall behind, this will all be for nothing, I'll be running home by the end of the year, the whole town knows I went off to train and be the best and they'll all know I failed and-"

Celestino had found him in the changing room, perched on the bench with his knees digging into his chest, face and eyes and every single nerve burning with shame. To his credit, he had calmly told him it was fine, and to just come out when he was ready, or they could give it a miss if he wanted? But he had forced himself out onto the ice, and flubbed every single jump he attempted until Celestino gently told him that he'd take him back to his dorm. He'd broken down in the car and told him that he was sorry for wasting his time, that he shouldn't have let everything get on top of him like that. And yet, for years, his coach had never once told him that his inability to deal with anything was a deal breaker. He got him through competitions with high enough scores to Skype home about. He helped him to maintain this façade.

Until now, of course. Now he's sitting in a small, neat room with walls painted mint green, and a table with a box of tissues on it. Across the table sits a middle-aged man in a sweater vest, shifting sheets of paper on his lap.

"So Yuuri, now that you've filled me in on what's been going on, what is it you hope to gain from this?"

What indeed. To be less pathetic, to be just like the other skaters, for God's sake, his roommate is nearly four years younger and he never approaches anything with more than a smile, because everything is an opportunity to him. As it should be to me, he reasons.

"To be strong." The man raises an eyebrow. "I'm just so weak compared to-"

"I'll stop you there, Yuuri. I can tell right now that a huge problem with you is your tendency to compare yourself to others."

"I have to, I'm an ath-" he bites back that word, feeling undeserving of it.

"I understand that, but you need to work towards personal goals. Ones that have absolutely nothing to do with anyone else. Do you understand?"

He does, but isn't sure how to even begin to process just him, on his own, as a single human being. There's barely enough there to form a person; all he is, he thinks, is just putrid disgust with himself, rotting and expanding until it threatens to rip him to shreds. That's when he's not so utterly terrified by everything around him, and everyone, and everything everyone says or thinks or even might think about him one day-

"Yuuri?"

He realises that he's utterly rigid and trembling, and forces the familiar shaky breath in.

"OK, Yuuri, in through your nose, hold it, and out through your mouth, alright?" The doctor reaches to the desk next to him and takes a small pad from it.

In through the nose, although that's still kind of stuffed up from a cold the other week, but still. Hold it. One. Two. Three. Yellow pad, he's writing something. What is he writing? That I'm inept? Is Celestino going to see this?

"You can breathe out now, Yuuri." The doctor tears a page off his pad, and takes a single page from the pile in his lap. "I've got a printout here on how to deal with panic attacks. I'm sure most of it seems rather obvious, but it might be worth hanging onto and looking at when things are particularly bad, alright? Just as a reminder. I know people don't always remember breathing exercises and such when they're feeling particularly anxious or overwhelmed."

The page is printed slightly crooked and it looks like the printer may have been running out of ink.

"Thanks." Another deep breath in, although he remembers to switch to his nose halfway through.

"I'm also writing you a prescription, if that's OK with you. A lot of people find that a low dose of antidepressants, while they're not a magic wand, will help put you on the right path to feeling better. Blowing the clouds away, if you like."

He stares down at the slip of paper. "Do I have to?"

"Well, no, I can't make you take them. I just strongly advise giving them a try. Obviously, there will be some side effects at first, you may feel drowsy or may even find your symptoms get worse occasionally, but give it two weeks, and let me know how you're doing at our next session, alright?"

"And these will- I mean, they should help me feel better?"

"It's all trial and error, but these work for a lot of people. You may find that once your mood has lifted slightly, you'll be in a better place to deal with the anxiety. That's what we're hoping, anyway."

The antidepressants, initially, make him yawn a lot and, on one occasion, fall asleep in class (fortunately, no-one seemed to notice). Celestino corners him on day three.

"So, how did it go? If you don't mind my prying, that is."

He shrugs. "OK. Very... business-like. He didn't seem too interested, but didn't make me feel like I'd messed up by being there."

"Good. It's important for you to look after your health. All of it, understand?"

"Yeah. I just feel stupid."

"Why? You're not failing anything, you said yesterday you'd done pretty well on-"

"-I mean, I moved all the way here. You know, to train and win and make everyone proud. And now I'm taking pills so I don't freak out at normal situations, how am I supposed to handle competitions?"

"The same way you have been doing."

"I mean, the big ones. The Grand Prix, if I even get to it."

"Well, the same way you have been, but better, because you're actually getting help now. Thank God Phichit called me that night, because I know you downplay things until they're unmanageable."

"He still shouldn't have called you."

"Bullshit. He was deeply concerned, and he was right to be. Be grateful you ended up with a decent roommate, the guy I roomed with in college just never washed and made the whole place stink of dirty socks and pot."

"I am grateful." He's been trying to tie the laces on his left foot for a couple of minutes now. "Urgh. My hands feel shaky. Apparently that's normal."

"Well, as long as your feet work."

Yuuri's not sure why, but that phrase sticks in his head after that. _As long as my feet work_. He whispers it to himself once his hands steady and he starts feeling slightly less drained, he fits it between gulps of air during his worst moments, he even mentions it to his doctor, who smiles and says it's a good attitude to take. After a while, he takes to writing it in Japanese on his wrist. If anyone asks, he just says it's a dentist appointment reminder, or something he needs to buy from the store.

In time, he finds that his feet working is almost enough to get him through the worst of him.


End file.
